Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

December 6, 2002

Rasmussen: ISU budget request for FY04 'pretty straightforward'

Funds for salaries, faculty positions and economic development make up Iowa State's wish list for next fiscal year.

Speaking at the P&S Council's open forum Dec. 5, assistant provost Ellen Rasmussen said the university's appropriation request for FY04, which has been submitted to the Board of Regents, State of Iowa, is "pretty straightforward." That request includes:

Permanent funding for FY03 salary increases. (The Legislature funded FY03 salary increases for the state with one-time funds from a reserve source.) "Our first request is, let's make the raises we are all receiving permanent," Rasmussen said.
Full funding for FY04 salary increases.
$3.5 million to help restore faculty positions that have been lost over recent years due to financial hard times.
$0.5 million to restore funding to economic development units, which sustained about 60 percent cuts in their budgets during last minute efforts by the Legislature to finalize the budget.

However, Rasmussen said, it's too early to tell what will happen next fiscal year.

"A budget is like a puzzle that has a lot of pieces in it," she said. "Right now, people are working on lots of different pieces and we're not quite sure how they're all going to fit together."

So far this fiscal year, Rasmussen said, the budget situation seems good.

"The state revenues for this year are running, by a percentage point or two, ahead of what they had built this year's budget on," she said. "That doesn't say anything about where we are running relative to last year, but we are doing fine as far as what the state planned for in terms of revenue for this year."

(The complete open forum is online as a streaming video file at http://www.iastate.edu/~ps_info/streamingforums.html.)

Diversity resolution
During its meeting, the P&S Council passed a resolution in support of diversity. Condemning recent anti-homosexual graffiti spray painted on two campus buildings, the resolution says in part:

"The P&S Council believes that our campus is enriched and enlivened by diversity of all kinds. The council also supports free speech, open debate and the expression of diverse ideas and opinions. Given this, we have an obligation to promote an environment where discrimination, harassment, or threatening behavior directed toward any group or individual is not tolerated." P&S Council president Rex Heer said, "It's too bad we wait for a negative incident to reaffirm our support of diversity. Sometimes it takes an incident like this to remind us there are people who find an unwelcoming environment on our campus."

The resolution also voices support for programs such as the Safe Zone sticker project. The Safe Zone sticker can be displayed in campus offices to relay a message of "nonjudgmental concern and understanding" to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender students, faculty and staff. More.

The council also approved a resolution calling for a compensation illustration to be included on AccessPlus. The illustration would show ISU employees their total compensation, salary plus benefits. Employees used to received a copy of this in the mail.